When PA 16th district Representative Joe Pitts became the head of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health after the 2010 mid-term elections, some American women knew we were in for a rough ride.

Congressman Joe Pitts has been an anti-abortion advocate for decades and an avowed foe of Planned Parenthood. The only form of sex education Pitts will endorse is the failed program of abstinence. And of course, Pitts is anti-gay marriage.

Finding a Voice, Taking a Stand

In the fall of 2009, American women and the men in our lives certainly took our right to contraception and other reproductive health services for granted.

Yes, the anti-abortion debate swirled constantly around us. The tone was shifting but still not in a truly frightening way. My group was being called murderers of countless innocent children for having used an IUD as my favored method of birth control.

The voices that had stalked me for a year in the 70s, threats marking me for death and putting me in police protection for a year in Buffalo, New York, grew more pronounced. In the late 70s, I walked away from a career in journalism after decapitated animals, bloody knives and my hanging rope arrived daily.

When my masked stalker finally flew across the windshield of my car on a cold fall night, I fought for my life, gunning the accelerator in self-survival mode. Sobbing on the phone to the now well-known and very supportive lieutenant of my police department, I explained that I didn’t know if my pro-life stalker was dead or alive in the parking lot.

My crime? As an American woman in a free country, I did not understand supporting the Supreme Court Roe decision on a TV panel would put my life at risk.

Luckily, I am talented in business and was able to redirect my career, once I understood that being a journalist who agreed with Supreme Court decisions was reason to kill me. I was young then. Read on.

Planned Parent Spotlight

Dayna Smith/AP PhotoSusan G. Komen’s chief fundraiser Julie Teer is leaving the organization for a position as senior vice president of resource development at the Boys and Girls’ Clubs, reportsThe Daily Beast.

Planned Parenthood & Republicans

Journalist and former television news reporter and anchor at CNN and NBC Campbell Brown wrote a NYTimes op ed called Planned Parenthood’s Self-Destructive Behavior. Brown cites Ronald Reagan’s comment “the person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.”

We don’t see prochoice challenges in this light, believing instead that it’s women’s reproductive health rights and other women’s issues “shiny objects” — to quote the Romney campaign — that lay in the heart of the 20 percent of backroom deals made in Congress and state legislatures, focused on controlling women’s bodies.

Will Planned Parenthood back any Republican candidates who are prochoice? That question lies at the heart of Brown’s piece. She cites the distressing turn that Planned Parenthood took against Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of five Republicans who stood by the organization last year, when she supported the confirmation of Bush Supreme Court judge Samuel A. Alito.

While the vote was a challenging one for Senator Collins, she says she came to it after speaking with Mr. Alito about his respect for precedent and whether he considered Roe v. Wade settled law. (Senator Collins has since also voted to confirm Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.) Ms. Collins was acting in the traditional (and admirable) spirit of the Senate, which tends to confirm judicial nominees unless the person is clearly unqualified.

Planned Parenthood turned against her, says Collins, who now calls the group “infuriating” and nothing more than “an arm of the Democratic National Committee.”

Campbell Brown raises valid questions about Planned Parenthood’s willingness to support prochoice Republican candidates, which is a position that AOC endorses. The organization must rise above partisan politics, which is darn difficult when the Republican War on women is so real.

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